Sorry if you’ve been asked this before, but I absolutely adore how you draw hands.
Do you have any tips or a tutorial for drawing them?
Oh gosh I am so sorry for the delay on this!! I kept meaning to reply and just kept forgetting. I'm drawing some hands right now so I thought I'd finally respond!
A few tips right off the bat:
Stay loose. It's important to sketch roughly to capture the energetic essence of the gesture of the hand, and NOT focus on details (i.e wrinkles, overlapping flesh, knuckle indentations etc)
Find the overall envelope of the shape: reduce the hand into a mitten. Don't even worry about the individual fingers until you can really understand the overall mitten proportions (i.e the palm is about half the length of the fingers, depending on dorsal or palmer side)
The middle finger is the longest, with the most prominent knuckle (of course, depending on the ref photo, there may be exceptions). Think of it like the "spine" of the hand.
Knuckles are not just circles or ball-joints, they represent the overlap of the finger segments. This doesn't really make verbal sense, and I only had this epiphany like, today, after YEARS of drawing hands.
The fingers flow out from the carpal attachment at the wrist like a fan, and will all flow together in a "wi-fi" type arc. FIND THE ARCS of the knuckles and finger tips FIRST, before drawing anything else. THIS IS THE EASIEST WAY TO DRAW HANDS, and how I teach beginners. Beginners who ignore this and try to just jump right into drawing details struggle a LOT more than those who simplify everything into mittens and wi-fi arcs.
Adding fingernails is VERY helpful to showcase the perspective of the finger. Other accessories like rings help too.
Finally, remember that everything is connected and flows together - avoid drawing just one finger at a time, or even the palm and then the fingers. Try to really capture the entire hand. Really look at the reference first before drawing. Compare negative vs positive space, and observe cascading overlap between each knuckle and finger.
(refs from GMM 2881)
There's also this amazing video that I use to teach my students about more in-depth hand structure and gestural drawing:
"Draw Better Hands Now" by Marco Bucci
You can also check out my hands tag, and art tips tags for more!















